Lucid Dreaming (Pt. 1)

I was walking down a narrow aisle between office cubicles. I stopped at the opening of one cubicle and observed a young woman who was sitting at a computer, typing furiously at her keyboard. She was an attractive Asian-American woman, and I thought that the wireless telephone headset that she was wearing gave her a certain Star Trek look. She turned to look at me and smiled, then she stood up and began to unbutton her blouse. Quite interested in the proceedings, I stepped into the cubicle, but she rose up off the floor and began to float toward the ceiling. At that moment it dawned on me that I was dreaming, and then it further dawned on me that I knew that I was dreaming. I had awakened inside of a dream.

Stephen LaBerge, founder of the Lucidity Institute and a pioneer researcher in the field of lucid dreaming, defines a lucid dream very simply as "dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming." I suppose that is a good enough definition to proceed with, although it is more of a description of the experience than a definition of it. I should also state clearly that I have become a bit disenchanted with LaBerge and his "institute," along with just about every other online source that you will find when you type "lucid dreaming" into the search engine of your choice. What was once a fascinating inquiry into this strange sleep phenomenon seems to have turned into a new-age money-making scheme. The information offered by most lucid dreaming web sites ranges from pseudoscientific jargon to mysticism and spirituality. All of them have something to sell: books and DVD's, conferences at exotic resorts, and various mechanical contraptions that are supposed to help the user induce lucid dreams.

Lucid dreaming is a very real phenomenon, as I can attest from personal experience, but it is very difficult to describe it to someone who has not had the experience. I am reminded of the conundrum in which one contemplates how to describe the color "orange" to a person who has been blind from birth. Essentially, a lucid dream is a dream during which the "conscious" or "waking" part of your mind achieves some level of awareness. You are still asleep, still dreaming, but you are aware that you are asleep and dreaming.

Lucid dreams come in many different forms. At the most basic level, a lucid dream is nothing more than a fleeting moment of vague awareness, such as I just described. The dream proceeds along its course in spite of that awareness while you tag along as an enlightened observer, or, as is more often the case, you are startled by the phenomenon and you wake--true waking--in your bed. In a more intense lucid dream experience, the dreamer is fully aware that he or she is dreaming, and the dream environment is every bit as real as the waking world. However, the dreamer is still unable to exert any control over the dream, and is again relegated to the role of an observer. In the most profound lucid dreams, the dreamer is able to exert some measure of control over the dream itself. In my own experience, the amount of control that the dreamer is able to achieve is directly related to the persistence with which he or she pursues such dream control, over the course of many lucid dreams that the dreamer has provably induced, and during which the dreamer has consciously (and repeatedly) attempted to exert some control over the dream's content and setting. Put less pseudoscientifically, where it concerns lucid dreaming practice does indeed make perfect.

I don't care to rehash the research that has already been done regarding this sleep phenomenon. You can search the web and get as much information as you care to digest on the subject (and possibly sign up for one of those Creative Consciousness conferences in the Hawaiian Islands, while you're at it). They all provide the same basic information, using the terms that LaBerge coined back in the 70's, and they all seem to radically over-complicate the issue. I've divided the process into three components: inducing a lucid dream, sustaining lucidity, and dream control. I will cover them--along with a little section on the dark side of lucid dreaming--in part two of this article. Hopefully these simple techniques (simply described) will enable you to enjoy lucid dreams of your own.

Which leads me to the obvious question: why bother? This is a little more difficult to answer than it would at first appear. I think you have to be a certain kind of person to seek out such an experience. Not some new-age spiritualist, necessarily, just someone who is innately fascinated by things and a bit adventurous. For example, as I write this article it occurs to me that if I could float up from the chair where I am sitting, through the ceiling, and fly off across town...I would. If I could say to myself, when I get up from this chair and go to look out the window I will see a beautiful naked woman sitting on an elephant in my backyard, then I would say the words and head for the window to have a look. If those two statements strike you as frivolous or absurd, then perhaps lucid dreams hold nothing of value for you. If you go to bed at night for no purpose other than to rest from one day's labor and prepare for the next, nothing that I say here will have any meaning for you.

I have always been fascinated by dreams, and I have never thought of sleep as nothing more than a brief, black interlude between periods of waking. It is an intensely personal experience, to be sure. If you don't believe me, just sit and listen to someone go on (and on) as they attempt to describe to you the Most Amazing Dream that they had the night before. Boring. Boring, and vaguely embarrassing. But for the dreamer, a lucid dream can be a wildly exhilarating experience.

And of course, the sex is awesome.